Italy’s Prime Minister to Quit After Losing Party Support

Source: NYT

Prime Minister Mario Monti said he intended to resign after losing the backing of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s party, according to a statement issued late Saturday by the president’s office.

Mr. Monti said that he would first try to muster the votes needed to pass a budget for 2013 but that the withdrawal of support last week by Mr. Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party represented a “categorical motion of no confidence in the government,” according to the statement.

Only hours earlier, Mr. Berlusconi said that he was ready to run for office again, promising to bring the change Italy needed.

During a two-hour meeting on Saturday evening, Mr. Monti told President Giorgio Napolitano that he would make an effort in Parliament to pass the budget and a financial stability law to try to defer “the consequences of a government crisis” before handing in his “irrevocable resignation,” the statement said.

1. Monti was never meant to be a long-term pm anyway.

He was leading what THE ECONOMIST called a "technocratic" government(i.e., one that was non-partisan and just there to do what the banks told it to do...i.e., cut the social wage down to nothing).

It will be interesting to see whether the "center-left" opposition decides to give up on its fixation with "respectability" and actually defend the poor and the workers, the people who support it. If it once again gets in and simply continues the austerity, the "center-left" will be wiped out in subsequent elections, because no one at all will have any reason to bother voting for it.